A post attempts to justify Russian attacks on Ukraine that kill civilians

By Vistinomer On Jun 9, 2025 0

Scenes from Kyiv after Russian missile attack

The deadliest attacks on civilians since Russia launched its unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine have been well documented. Moscow’s attacks have repeatedly targeted apartment buildings, train stations, city centers, hospitals, evacuation convoys, and gatherings of people, with each attack causing large numbers of civilian casualties

The deadliest attacks on civilians since Russia launched its unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine have been well documented. Moscow’s attacks have repeatedly targeted apartment buildings, train stations, city centers, hospitals, evacuation convoys, and gatherings of people, with each attack causing large numbers of civilian casualties

We analyze a Facebook post that shares video material that justifies the Russian bombing of Ukraine and the killing of civilians in those attacks. The post quotes political commentator Douglas Macgregor and writes:

When you place soldiers, weapons, and ammunition in a civilian facility then that is a legitimate military target. It is not true that Russia is attacking civilian facilities, it is Ukraine that is violating the rules of warfare.
Douglas Macgregor…

The deadliest attacks on civilians since the beginning of Russia’s unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine are well documented.

Attacks from Moscow have repeatedly targeted apartment buildings, train stations, city centers, hospitals, evacuation convoys, and gatherings of people, with each attack causing large numbers of civilian casualties.

Launching a cluster munition rocket is something Russia does to kill as many civilians as possible, the Ukrainian President’s office said, referring to one of the attacks in Sumy, which used fragments that exploded in mid-air to cause as much damage as possible to surrounding areas.

According to the latest United Nations statistics, over 12,340 civilian deaths have been recorded in Ukraine since the start of the war launched by Russia in February 2022, and the true number is likely higher.

The Kyiv Independent recently published a list of Russia’s deadliest attacks on civilians since the start of the military invasion. The list reveals a pattern of targeted attacks on civilian centers, with little or no evidence that the attacks were unsuccessful attempts to hit Ukrainian military targets. Among those attacks is the one on the Kharkiv administrative building on March 1, 2022. A disturbing video of the first attack on the building can be seen here.

The video shows several civilian vehicles “disappearing” in the explosion. A second shot destroyed the right wing of the building 10 minutes later, just as rescuers were arriving at the scene, a textbook example of what a “double-tap” strike is. These attacks are designed in the following way–after targeting a building, waiting for ambulances, media outlets and rescuers to arrive, the same building is attacked again to kill civilians. Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov later said that 44 civilians were killed in the attack on the Kharkiv administration building.

On March 3, 2022, Russia bombed a square in a residential area of the city of Chernihiv, a regional center that lies between the Russian border and Kyiv, killing 47 people. The targets were tall buildings, small houses. This was a merciless, indiscriminate attack on people as they went about their daily business in their homes, streets and shops, Amnesty International said.

After an investigation, Amnesty International was unable to identify a legitimate military target within the scope of the attack. Most of the victims were waiting in line for water and food when the bombing occurred.

On the night of March 7, 2022, Russian forces bombed homes in Sumy. The attacks killed 22 civilians, including 3 children, according to local authorities. One of them was Artem Pryymenko, a 15-year-old boy who died with his two brothers and their entire family while planning an evacuation from the city.

The city of Kramatorsk in Donetsk Oblast, which Russia has been trying to completely occupy since the start of the war, has also been the target of an attack with civilian casualties. On April 8, 2022, as more than a thousand residents, most of them women and children, were waiting in line for an evacuation train, Russia bombed the train station. 63 civilians, including 9 children, were killed. Russia initially claimed it was hitting a military target, but later denied responsibility after international reports of civilian casualties emerged.

“There was so much blood, dead people everywhere,” said 19-year-old Anastasiia Shestopal, who was disabled as a result of the attack, meaning her leg was amputated.

A shopping mall in the Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk, located at the time far from the frontline, was also targeted by Russian airstrikes. It was bombed on June 27, 2022, killing 21 civilians.

Despite the high number of civilian casualties, Russia continues to attack Ukrainian cities with these missiles, which are outdated and notoriously inaccurate when fired in urban areas, according to British security agencies.

A five-story apartment building with residents in the town of Chasiv Yar was the target of one of the deadliest rocket attacks on civilians in 2022. On July 9, multiple rockets were fired in a 20-second burst. It took rescuers five days to search the rubble. Nine people were found alive, and 46 civilians were killed, including a child. Russia falsely claimed to have killed 300 soldiers in the attack.

On July 14, 2022, at the same time as a conference on Russian war crimes in Ukraine was taking place in The Hague, Russia launched an attack on the city of Vinnytsia in Ukraine, which is located far from the battlefield. Between 10 and 11 a.m. on a weekday, rockets were fired into the city center.

200 people were injured. Liza Dmytriyeva, a 4-year-old Ukrainian girl with Down syndrome who was returning from speech therapy with her mother, was one of the 28 civilians killed in the attack. Photos of her bloody pushchair lying on the road next to her body went viral online.

The Kremlin routinely claims to be targeting military targets when it attacks civilian areas, but in only one case with mass casualties, international observers found that Ukrainian forces were partly responsible for endangering civilians after they took up positions at the Stara Krasnyanka nursing home in Luhansk in 2022. Due to landmines planted around the nursing home, the Ukrainian military confirmed that it was unable to evacuate 86 people from it. On 11 March 2022, Russia attacked the building with heavy artillery, killing 56 civilians.

International law dictates that even the presence of soldiers does not justify military action if there is a high risk of civilian deaths, Dmytro Koval, a lawyer and director of the Ukrainian human rights organization Truth Hounds, told the Kyiv Independent.

Russian armed forces have systematically committed crimes against humanity by hunting civilians with drones, according to a report released Wednesday by the UN’s independent commission on Ukraine. It said that since July 2024, Russian forces have periodically killed and injured Ukrainian civilians living within a 100-kilometer (62 miles) radius of the Dnieper River.

Drone attacks are widespread, systematic, and part of a coordinated state policy, the report says.

According to Politico, the victims were mostly men, but there were also women and children. Civilians were targeted in a variety of circumstances, often while shopping for daily necessities, by car or on foot.

The attacks followed a regular pattern and the same modus operandi, demonstrating that they were planned, directed, and organized … There is no information suggesting that Russian military and civilian authorities have taken any steps to prevent or stop the commission of the crimes, the U.N. commission said, adding that nearly 150 civilians have been killed and hundreds more injured in the mentioned area.

Russia systematically destroyed evidence and obstructed an international investigation into the attacks, including their bombing of the Mariupol Drama Theater on March 16, 2022, when between 300 and 600 people were killed.

Amnesty International called the attack a clear war crime.

A Russian attack on Sumy also occurred on April 13, when Russia carried out a “double tap” with Iskander missiles in the center of Sumy. A total of 35 civilians were killed, including 2 children, and over 100 people were injured. One of the attacks also killed passengers on a passenger bus. A 13-year-old boy pulled several survivors from the burning bus, including his mother.

Nine children were killed in a single attack in 2025 in a residential area with a playground, a restaurant, and residential buildings in Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of Volodymyr Zelensky. Some of them were playing with their grandparents, while others were at home with their families. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that their “precise” attack targeted a meeting of “commanders and Western instructors” held in a restaurant and that they killed 85 of them. However, security footage showed that no military personnel were present, according to France 24.

Due to all the above facts, we assess the post we are reviewing as untrue.

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